“Our sexual harassment committee regularly provide worker training on sexual harassment. Our workers trust them well. Before they thought that behaviour is okay, but now our workers understand what sexual harassment policy is better”, said Kanith, a Compliance Supervisor at King Fashion Factory.
Kanith is a Sexual Harassment Prevention Committee member and also a lead person in implemented the policy and focal point with CARE Cambodia. He joins every meeting and workshop conducted by CARE’s STOP project. He is given full authorization in managing and lead the committee in implementing the policy.
“Before cooperating with the STOP project, the factory had only a discrimination and harassment policy. We shared this policy once a year with the line leaders, supervisors and managers on how to penalise those who didn’t comply with the policy. We did not have worker training through specific sessions like this. Now we have a clear policy and the training manual so that we can train our workers here,” he said.
Our factory has fully adopted the sexual harassment prevention policy from CARE Cambodia and engaged with CARE since 2018. Our factory management is really supportive and cooperative with CARE in allowing us to receive capacity building through intensive training and ongoing coaching so that they can properly take on their roles and responsibilities as stated in the policy. Moreover, factory managers allow workers to join training during working hours; around 30 workers per training.
“Our workers now are more confident to report sexual harassment behaviour. They know the definition of sexual harassment in the policy and could answer quiz during the training correctly,” he confirmed.
“One worker reported that she was verbally harassed by her colleague. Our committee took action immediately and the case was solved peacefully. We will continue training workers on sexual harassment prevention as in our plan”, said Kanith.
Kanith is committed to stopping sexual harassment in my workplace and review the sexual harassment policy twice or third time per year with relevant staff to ensure we are doing the right things and update. Now he also trains others in what the policy means and the importance of reporting harassment. He added “I believe that I am making the resolution with confidence and follow the correct procedure”.
CARE also work with many other garment factories and support many of them like King Fashion factory where Kanith is working with support from Australian Government.
CARE’s work on the Gender Based Violence and Dignified Works is supported by the Australian Government and many other private donors.
Learn more at Enhancing Women's Voice to Stop Sexual Harassment>